Monday, November 05, 2007

Moleskine Notebook

My wife bought me a Moleskine notebook a while back, and I love it. It is the hard pocket-sized ruled notebook, and it is perfect for carrying everywhere and taking notes, ideas, drawings, etc.

I have all kinds of variants of the composition notebook, both softcover and hardback, for work, and that's great for work. When I'm on my own, though, I want something smaller. There is a pocket-sized composition notebook, and although I've seen a few friends use it I prefer the Moleskine, as did Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh and Ernest Hemingway!

I'm still experimenting with pens. I've heard good stuff about the Pilot G2, but I tried a Sharpie Ultra Fine and it bleeds too much through the paper. I thought I had some Sharpie Extra Fines, which is my preference, but I haven't tried them yet.

I believe that the .5mm GEL that I mentioned is the Office Depot generic version of the Pilot G2, but I'll have to double-confirm.

I just did some quick tests and the width of the stroke is great (I can't stand to write with .7mm) and virtually no bleed through unless I do some pen shading.

I'm also looking for some sub-.5mm pens. I had some technical drawing pens from college that were very fine (.25mm - .4mm), but they are in my pen collection that I'm forbidden to bring out of storage.

Please tell me that your pen collection is forbidden to come out because of the wife. I see it as a crime not to have many different pens for all sort of jobs. You can NEVER have enough pens. And if the cool factor is very high then you need two or more.